


the shape you've grown

by towardsmorning



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Character of Color, Episode 33: Cassette, Family, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:57:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Carlos has plenty of experience with how difficult it is to detect an absence and read meaning into it from his work, and he wonders how much more stark the absence they're dealing with here must feel from within Cecil's own mind."</p><p>Cecil and Carlos look for answers, or at least for which questions to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the shape you've grown

**Author's Note:**

> This fic got away from me. Very, very far away from me. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, except that I have a lot of deep seated feelings about both Cecil and Carlos's families.
> 
> Strictly speaking, this precedes 'The wind talks back', but I wouldn't quite call it a series as much as me writing all my WTNV fic in the same general timeline.

Carlos hesitates as he stands in front of the door to Cecil's apartment. He has a key, but for the first time he feels as though simply walking in unannounced would make him an intruder. After a minute of agonising in the long, dim passageway, which looks largely like cheap apartment buildings do everywhere, Carlos knocks gently enough that if Cecil wants he can pretend not to have heard; Carlos would understand that, after today. He's pretty sure it'd be his own first impulse if his and Cecil's positions were reversed.

He waits, wishing his breathing didn't sound so loud in the otherwise unnatural silence.

After thirty seconds of nothing, just as Carlos starts to fidget and consider leaving, perhaps phoning Cecil from outside to arrange something later, he hears slow footsteps approaching the door. He stills. After a moment more the door opens to reveal Cecil, looking tired but otherwise unscathed. Carlos smiles tentatively and tries not to focus on how small and uncertain Cecil seems, leaning against the door frame and not quite meeting Carlos's eyes for a moment.

"Hi," Carlos says, gently. Cecil blinks, then smiles wanly and beckons him over the threshold, letting the door click shut behind them.

*****

Very early on in their relationship, before the first month was up, Cecil had picked up Carlos's phone while he was cooking for them both in his apartment. It turned out to be his youngest sister on the other end, and while this had definitely not been the way Carlos had planned to start introducing Cecil to his family, he really needn't have worried. By the time he'd finished cooking half an hour later Carlos had ended up having to to wrest the phone out of a grinning Cecil's hands and make apologies to his sister, who was laughing delightedly and made him promise to ring tomorrow for 'a talk'. Carlos had resigned himself to the inevitable teasing said call would entail and gone to go join Cecil at the table, and thought that at least it hadn't been his mother. She would never have forgiven Carlos for letting her find out that way, whereas Silvia would, at least, only mock-complain.

If nothing else the call had seemed to have put Cecil in a good mood. He'd beamed all through dinner, and then when they had finished and Cecil had insisted on doing the washing up he had started to hum, some unfamiliar snatch of song that wormed its way into Carlos's head while he sat silently and watched, struck by how content he was to just see Cecil be a part of his space like this, acting at home. Realising that Cecil knew where his cutlery went made Carlos happier than it had any right to.

"I didn't know you had sisters," Cecil said as he dumped the last of the water down the drain and put the final dish away. He came back over to sit with Carlos, their legs bumping comfortably underneath his too-small table. The smile had still been there but a little smaller, softer. Carlos had understood an opening, or maybe a request, when he saw one.

"Three," he'd said, "Silvia's the youngest. I'm the oldest of us all. Then there's Maria and Elizabeth."

Cecil propped his chin on his hand, looking a little wistful; the late evening light was casting long shadows on his face, and Carlos impulsively took the hand still laid on the table.

"It must be wonderful," Cecil had said, absently rubbing a thumb over Carlos's knuckles as he talked. "Having a full house. I was an only child."

Carlos had gathered as much, he supposed, without ever really thinking about it. The only time Cecil had ever discussed family with Carlos was an offhand reference to what Carlos had _thought_ was his mother's death, maybe, possibly; and a likewise brief mention of a grandfather that had lived outside Night Vale Cecil had visited quite a lot when he was very young, but who had, this time certainly, died. It's not as though Carlos can't think of plenty of reasons not to raise the topic of family, some now increasingly obvious when he looks back on the scene in his memory, but Cecil is so effusive about all other parts of his life. He'd gathered at the time that there perhaps wasn't so much to talk about.

"Yeah," Carlos had responded, which was both true and a massive oversimplification. "I get along with all my sisters, so it worked out okay. I don't see them so much anymore, though. And I left home pretty young, so it hasn't been a full house in... a long time. Except for a couple days at Christmas. When we can all make it down." Which hadn't been all that common for the past decade, but he'd kept that to himself.

"Your parents must miss you."

Cecil's tone was impossible to read, and Carlos found himself tightening the grip between their hands without meaning to. "Just my Mom," he'd said, unsure of if it was the right thing to say, somehow. "And yeah. She spends a lot of time asking me to come home."

"Tell me about her?"

It didn't sound like Cecil had intended it to be a question, but it rose at the end and seemed both curious and a little unsure. Carlos had held his hand and talked about his mother's cooking, and her laughter, and the way she had always stayed up too late to help Carlos with homework, all the while not really being sure what was actually being discussed between the two of them, sat at the too-small table until the sun vanished entirely below the horizon and all Carlos could see in the low light was Cecil's silhouette.

*****

Now, they go around Cecil's entire apartment together. This isn't particularly difficult, since Cecil's apartment is tiny, and there's no chance that they'll miss anywhere important; it is surprisingly time consuming, however, as Cecil doesn't particularly believe in tidying up. Or, it seems, throwing things out.

Cecil ties his hair back messily and before they begin goes through to his bedroom to change, coming back in an old, faded t-shirt and sweatpants. The sweatpants are bright orange, but even so, it makes Cecil look so much less defined than Carlos is accustomed to, and he simultaneously feels a pang of worry and a rush of love, seeing him so stripped bare like this. Carlos is only in jeans and a t-shirt anyway, and waves off Cecil's offers to let him go change first; he can tell it's a stalling tactic, and he'd rather get this over and done with.

So they look for anything that might be anything, which isn't a particularly methodical way to go about it but, when faced with something as unknown as the tapes Cecil had found seemed to be, seems the only real option they have. Carlos sifts through a lot of assorted old pre-show notes that he's sure Cecil doesn't need anymore, half-empty nail polish bottles that seem too old to be of use, books covered in thin layers of dust from disuse and various similar things. It makes him think about his mother, scowling every time she'd been forced to throw a shirt ripped beyond repair in the trash, tutting every time something broke and wondering if it was worth keeping 'just in case'.

He hasn't turned up anything after twenty minutes. When he calls through to Cecil clattering through the kitchen, he doesn't get a response, and after a moment Carlos puts down the book he'd been flicking through and goes to check on him.

Cecil slams a drawer shut just as Carlos enters and he can't help startling, heart-rate jumping automatically at the loud noise, and at Cecil's hunched posture, at the noticeably upset and slightly harried look that Cecil is trying to wipe off his face as he turns around. This whole afternoon, evening and night has Carlos on edge and he has to close his eyes for a moment to try and force it back down, swallowing roughly and breathing in deeply.

When he opens his eyes again Cecil is hovering a little above him, his previous expression replaced with naked worry; Carlos feels bad for considering it an improvement. "Sorry," he says, hand hesitantly settling on Carlos's elbow. "I didn't mean to startle you, I just..."

"I know," Carlos says, "It's fine, don't worry. Can we take a break if you haven't found anything?"

They go outside because Cecil wants to smoke and the fire alarm has been temperamental lately, he says, complaining at the least little thing and threatening through some mechanism Cecil won't explain to strike if he keeps smoking in the house. Carlos sits with him on the curb, watching the trail of smoke from Cecil's thin cigarette curl slowly in the orange lamplight, and tries to pull his words together into something useful.

"This would be easier if we had an idea of what to look for," he says, trying not to sound anything but encouraging. When Cecil doesn't respond, he tries again. "Maybe if we... talked about what you do remember, it'd be easier to look for things you don't."

"Do you think so?" Cecil says, and Carlos has to take a second to remember that Cecil is very much not given to sarcasm and that the question is genuine.

"I mean, maybe," he says, wishing he could be more sure. He has plenty of experience in how difficult it is to detect an absence and read meaning into it from his work, and he wonders how much more stark the absence they're dealing with here must feel from within Cecil's own mind. He'd destroyed those tapes on air, and Carlos had half thought that would be the end of it, that Cecil would perhaps want to look away from whatever void was eating into his memories and never look back. Maybe that's really why they're doing this, so that Cecil never does this by accident again, can leave everything neatly snapped and pushed away where he can't see it.

Carlos reminds himself firmly that it isn't his decision.

After a few minutes more, Cecil finishes his first cigarette and immediately lights another. Carlos refrains from commenting and instead just shifts so that his arm is pressed up against Cecil's side.

When he starts to talk, it's quietly, mouth curling around smoke and not at all smooth like Carlos is accustomed to. For a brief moment, the roughness makes him think of Cecil as sounding young, and of how scared he had sounded on those tapes, voice cracking and open. Carlos presses more firmly against Cecil, trying not to shiver.

"I remember that when I was fifteen, my mother... went," he says, gnawing on his lip as he stares at the ground, the sky, anywhere but Carlos. It feels foreign, to have that attention directed so decisively elsewhere. "I don't recall the date, or the time, or if she told me she was going. I think that... yes, after a month or so I hadn't heard from her, and I started to wonder if she had died, only then I didn't know why I'd thought that in the first place, only that it felt like there was a reason. And then after that I always just thought of her as gone, I suppose, and didn't ever expect her back.

"I stayed in the house for a while, after. Well, I spent a lot of time at Josie's, and with Dana's mother, and at Earl's, but I guess I still technically lived at home. I remember that I still kept all the mirrors covered, because Mom said to, and that I didn't want to... change anything around unless- unless." Cecil doesn't trail off so much as stop abruptly, inhaling smoke with a sharp hiss and letting it out in a sigh that sounds a little irritated, probably with himself.

"I don't have any photo albums. I don't remember my brother at all, if he actually existed. I don't remember ever coming across the tape recorder, or interning, or..." this time he does trail off, frowning down at the ground. "See, I think I remember spending time at the station, but I don't remember doing anything in particular, just that I hung around a lot. I guess it was kind of weird they let me, in retrospect, if I wasn't working. Station management barely tolerates actual interns, after all."

Carlos doesn't know what to say, so he just leans his head on Cecil's shoulder and listens to the shudder of his exhale- slow, still unsteady.

*****

They don't find anything. Carlos wasn't really expecting to, but he can see from the relief and concern warring on Cecil's face that maybe Cecil had been. He tries not to be thankful that he doesn't have to deal with whatever decision about any more tapes Cecil might or might not have made.

"Let's go to bed," Carlos says, "We can talk more tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Cecil says, and nothing more, until they're both under covers, blinds drawn and only the slightest glint of light off Cecil's dark eyes letting Carlos know he isn't sleeping yet. Isn't even pretending, which is more unusual.

*****

Sunday is the only day on which Carlos could ever be described as sleeping in. He lets himself stay in bed until eight AM, and when he blinks himself awake, a little groggy, he rolls over to find Cecil already sat up in bed. This is surprising- Cecil's schedule normally means that he refuses to get up at what he insists on calling the crack of dawn but which is really just anything before mid morning. He's painting his nails, halfway through Carlos thinks, and so he must have been awake for some time, too.

Carlos props himself up on one elbow and rubs the sleep from his eyes, watching as Cecil meticulously applies a thin coat of pale blue polish. His black hair is loose and tangled, his eyes are squinting slightly as he tries to focus without his glasses, and Carlos is both relieved by the normality of the scene and troubled by the crease that's formed between Cecil's eyebrows, even if he's probably just projecting his own worry onto something entirely inane. After a minute of watching Cecil slowly finish up his right hand, tutting when he smudges some onto dark brown skin by accident, Carlos pulls himself up, careful not to upset the bottle, and presses a kiss to Cecil's cheek.

"Morning," Cecil mumbles, chewing his lip distractedly as he dabs at the mistake with a wash-cloth.

Carlos wants to say a lot of things, but he just responds in kind. There'll be time to talk later, when Cecil has done the things that ground him, reassure him of his own existence, like paint his nails and braid his hair. Or maybe he'll ask to do Cecil's hair for him; the past two times he's done so he's mostly made a mess of it, but Cecil had laughed and teased him, which more or less made up for it, Carlos thinks. Truth be told, he could use the reassurance himself this morning. The thought of Cecil's long hair wrapped around his wrist is an oddly soothing one.

He has a lot of questions; Carlos can be honest with himself about that. He feels bad about it, because he feels as though he should be entirely willing to leave it up to Cecil, but there's no point pretending otherwise. Cecil has always been- not enigmatic so much as intriguing, less a puzzle and more a story that Carlos wants the next paragraph of. He worries that if he pushes for answers then the threads that have been weaving in his mind to make up his image of the man will fall apart, stop cohering. He worries that the story will stop making sense, or that Cecil won't be able to tell it on his own terms. He worries, and worries, over and over until he thinks he'll pick his own mind to pieces.

Cecil finishes up and holds his hands out critically, fanning slender fingers against the white sheets.

"They look lovely," Carlos says, bending over and twisting his head to kiss the knuckles. It pulls a giggle out of Cecil, which in turn pulls a little of the weight off Carlos's shoulders. When he straightens up Cecil's smile is small but unstrained, and the crease between his eyebrows is gone.

"Come on," Carlos says, "I'll make breakfast, since you're up in time for once."

Cecil mock-objects to the slight on his sleeping pattern all the way through Carlos cooking, and he's never been so happy to bear teasing in his life.

*****

Carlos doesn't work on Sundays- lapsed he may be, but his Catholic upbringing has never quite been shaken- so he goes down with Cecil to the station.

Generally speaking Carlos doesn't spend a lot of time there. It feels as though he's overstepping in a way spending the night at Cecil's actual apartment doesn't, though Cecil has never been anything but encouraging when it comes to Carlos stopping by- perhaps it's the way Cecil talks on the radio, always talking about Carlos instead of to him even when he's known for months and months that Carlos almost never misses his show. Even ignoring that, his first impression of the studio had been of sheer terror at the radiation readings, something Carlos has never quite been able to shake his nervousness about. The combination of both things makes him feel out of place whenever he goes, like someone about to be caught eavesdropping.

But he goes today, because Cecil is smiling but he's not really talking much and Carlos finds that he wants to keep Cecil in his line of vision, almost as though in doing so he can remove all doubts about Cecil's existence. He can't, of course. Those doubts are far more complex than a simple matter of physicality and sight now, and direct observation counts for really very little in Night Vale.

The current, sole intern- whose name is Taylor and whose gender Carlos has been trying to politely infer for the past two weeks they've been working there, without success, probably on purpose- doesn't meet Cecil's eyes when they make their way into the recording booth. Instead they simply hand Cecil the mess of notices, messages and bloodstained paperwork from StrexCorp management that he'll use to make adjustments to the show this afternoon and then flees as unobtrusively as they can.

Cecil says nothing, just leans his cane against the desk and sits down as he always does, already scanning the papers in front of him. Carlos wonders if he should leave, then whether he should stay, before compromising and muttering something about going to the bathroom and slipping out the door.

Taylor is in the hall. They startle when Carlos comes out, guilt flashing across their face for a moment. Then after a second, they seem to steel themselves, pushing away from the wall they'd been leaning against to stand up straight.

"Is he OK?" they ask, sounding more confident than they look as they shift uneasily from one foot to the other.

Carlos thinks about it, rubbing a hand over his jaw and frowning. Cecil is doing work, work he loves, and this morning he had indeed let Carlos braid his hair, laughing when it took three tries to look acceptable, open-faced and honest. But he hadn't spoken much on the way in, walking next to Carlos in perfectly comfortable but still unusual silence- and Carlos can't help but remember the look on his face when he'd gone to check on Cecil in the kitchen, so desperate and unsure.

"I don't know," he says in the end, honestly. "I don't think Cecil knows either, really."

"He was really upset when the show finished," Taylor says, hesitantly, like they aren't really sure they should be telling him. "He almost ran out the station. Normally he sticks around for a while."

"Yeah," Carlos says, "Yeah, I- I know."

Taylor sighs, and their guilty look is back. "It doesn't really change anything. He knows that, right?"

Carlos nods, because he can't do anything else. He's been telling himself the same thing, the thing Cecil had been so strident about in his broadcast, that past performance is irrelevant and that misremembered youth is something to dismiss. He wonders if the real matter at hand, though, is less whether anything has changed and more whether this has mattered all along, is less that Cecil's history is so full of holes and empty spaces, and instead is more that Carlos has been skipping over those absences when he should have been paying attention.

*****

"Tell me about your mother," Carlos had asked once, not particularly paying attention, just looking for a conversation topic while he checked his email. The topic had come up somehow, he doesn't recall how anymore (and that sends a sudden, irrational spike of fear down his spine)- but Cecil had just smiled and come out with some radio-voiced quote about the futility of trying to describe a person with only sound, and Carlos had let the matter drop, charmed as he was.

*****

The broadcast starts and Carlos listens to it on the tinny radio in the intern break room, surrounded by piles of mess and trying not to think about pretty much anything that goes on in there.

"Welcome to Night Vale," Cecil says, his voice the same as it has been for as long as Carlos has known him. Carlos doesn't quite know what he had been dreading, but he breathes a sigh of relief anyway.

 

*****

Cecil meets him outside when he's done, nearly tripping over Carlos as he sits on the front step and watches the street light opposite flicker and shudder, casting strange shadows that are oddly soothing to watch; at one point he swears he sees shadow puppets for just a second, and it makes him smile whether he's seeing things or not.

"Sorry," Cecil says, sitting down next to him. "What did you think?"

"Great," Carlos says, like he always does, because it always is. Normally he has questions about the show- even after all this time, there are always questions- but tonight he clears his throat and, instead, asks- "I rang my sister while you were on air."

"Oh?" Cecil says. Carlos can't quite make out his face in the dim light, under the writhing shadows.

"Yeah," he says, clearing his throat nervously. He hopes, fervently, that he's gotten this right, that he hasn't misunderstood, that he isn't for the thousandth time in his life trampling all over someone else in an effort to just get things _right_. He'd given a vague, distant explanation to Silvia in the hopes that her usually-excellent judgement might help, even in the absence of data, and her response had been quite clear. "She said... she's coming back to California for a while."

"Really," Cecil says.

"She asked-" Carlos starts, but it catches in his throat before he can get the rest of the sentence out. He clears it again. "She wanted to know if you. If you wanted to visit. To meet her, that is. When she comes."

He's babbling, he knows. He can't seem to help it. Cecil, by contrast, is resolutely silent, and Carlos almost laughs at the role reversal. "I don't know if, I mean, do you even get time off from the station, or-"

"Carlos," Cecil finally interjects, thank God, "I would love to meet your sister."

 _You remember what Mom was like after Dad died,_ Silvia had said, _It's so easy to get caught up in memories, you know? Bring him down. A change of pace will help. Make some new ones instead. Trust me, it'll help._

"Oh," Carlos says, breathing out. "Good."

He doesn't know if what he can offer Cecil is a new family, if that's even possible, from what he knows of Cecil's. But new memories, the possibility of _something_ , he can do those things- something to soften the edges of the gap in his mind, to show him that not everything is known by absence.

*****

They go back to Cecil's place, full of dust and trinkets and paper covered with his words from long-finished broadcasts, and then they go straight to bed, not even turning the lights on. Everything seems softer in the dark, and even more so when Cecil, laid out beside him, takes Carlos's hand.

"I miss her," Cecil says into the void between them.

"Tell me about her," Carlos says, paying attention this time and closing his eyes as Cecil's voice falls heavily between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Never Look Away by Vienna Teng.


End file.
